


8 Days of Axel

by kawree



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-27 18:21:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15030557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kawree/pseuds/kawree
Summary: 8 short fics for the 8 Days of Axel.





	1. Friendship

**Author's Note:**

> so i'm a few days late getting this going, because my job was making me want to die, but i've quit now, so thank God that's over.
> 
>   
> 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anyway, here's ~~Wonderwall~~ Day One: Friendship. it's Lea, not Axel, but it still counts okay. i do what i want. 
> 
> this one is actually a scene i had planned for my gargantuan ongoing fic, [Dance While You Can](https://archiveofourown.org/works/471414/chapters/815705), but i never managed to find a good place for the exchange, so here it is. i'm not 100% happy with the intro and ending, because it was meant to be a scene in an ongoing work rather than a standalone, but i was already two days behind so i just wanted to get it out there. enjoy!

There were plenty of things that Lea made no claim to understand: math, modern art, the physics of Sora's hair… One thing he thought he at least had a basic understanding of, however, was how friendship worked. After all, despite having spent nearly half his life without a heart, he had managed to forge a pretty powerful bond with Roxas, and that counted for something, right? If he'd managed to do friendship without a heart, that had to make him some sort of genius or something, didn’t it?

Staring at the three people in front of him, though, he had to wonder if he really understood it at all.

"Are you seriously asking me this?" he asked, looking from Sora to Kairi to Riku and then back to Kairi in the middle. "Why do _I_ have to settle this?"

"Because you’re the neutral party!" Sora insisted, fisting his hands, and Lea shook his head quickly.

"That is _not_ true," he said. "I am very opinionated on a _multitude_ of subjects."

"Yeah, but you're not gonna take sides, like Riku does," Kairi said, folding her arms and nudging Riku with her hip. Riku, to his credit, simply rolled his eyes and shook his head.

"Riku, you can't take sides," Lea said, wagging his finger at him. "If you're gonna have two best friends, you can't pick one over the other."

"What would _you_ know about it?" Riku asked, arching one eyebrow, and Lea started to answer, then stopped himself.

Wait, no. Why had he been about to say that he had _had_ two best friends before? Sure, there had been Isa, once upon a time, but by the time Roxas had come into his life, Saïx had been about the furthest thing from Isa possible. He shook his head.

"Never mind that," he said, and then hefted a sigh. "All right, fine, what am I doing?"

"Sora's insisting that a tomato is a vegetable," Kairi said with far too much severity for the topic at hand, and Lea squinted at her.

"S'cuse me?"

"It's a _vegetable_!" Sora said sharply, giving Kairi's shoulder a shove. "Nobody puts tomato in a _fruit_ salad!"

"Fruits and vegetables aren't categorized by which goes in a what kind of _salad_ ," Kairi replied, and looked at Lea again. "A tomato is a _fruit_!" she said. "Fruits have seeds and come from flowering plants!"

"So you're telling me that a _cucumber_ and a _pumpkin_ is _also_ a fruit," Sora said, as though this was surely going to make her change her argument, and Kairi let out an exasperated noise.

" _Yes_ ," she said. "Tomatoes, cucumbers, and eggplants and bell peppers are all fruits—pumpkins are _squash_ , that's entirely different."

"Peppers can't possibly be fruits," Sora said as Riku just smeared a hand down his face. "Would you put a pepper in a smoothie?"

"Kale being a vegetable never stopped anyone from putting it in a smoothie, for one thing," Kairi said, shaking her head, "but again, smoothie ingredients are _not_ how plants are categorized, I'm _telling_ you."

For a moment all Lea could do was stare as the debate continued. Sure, he and Roxas had had their arguments, and certainly he'd had more than a few rows with Isa, but did friends really fight about fruits and vegetables?

"Sora, for crying out loud, there is raspberry salad dressing and cucumber is used in _skin care_ products, and none of that has anything to do with how the plants are classified," Kairi said, turning to Lea again. "Come on, Lea, you know things," she said, and Lea looked surprised by this acknowledgment. "Tell him tomatoes are a fruit."

"They're a _vegetable_!"

"You're both right, actually," Lea said, and both of them made a sharp, startled noise like they'd swallowed something bitter.

"What?" they asked in tandem, and Lea shrugged.

"I mean, _technically_ tomatoes and cucumbers are fruits," he said, and Kairi gave a loud _hah!_ as Sora folded his arms and sulked, "but…"

"But?" Sora asked hopefully, and for a moment, that buoyantly expectant look in his eyes looked far too much like Roxas.

Lea rubbed his forehead. "But," he said, "at least where _I_ grew up, chefs usually considered things that were _botanically_ fruits, but savory instead of sweet, to be vegetables."

This time, Sora made the _hah!_ sound, and Kairi glowered indignantly at him before turning the expression on Lea instead.

"Chefs don't make the rules!" she countered, and Lea snorted a helpless laugh.

"Well, would it help if I said they were also usually _taxed_ like vegetables, instead of fruits?"

Riku blinked in puzzlement. "Fruits and vegetables are _taxed_ differently?" he asked, and Sora pumped both fists into the air.

"The _government_ makes the rules!" he crowed, and proceeded to poke Kairi in the ribs with his index fingers.

"Lea!" she whined. "You were supposed to be _neutral_!"

"How was saying you were both right anything _but_ neutral?" he asked, throwing his hands up like he surrendered, and Riku took a step sideways toward him to speak in a stage whisper.

"'Neutral' in Kairispeak means 'on her side'," he assured him, and Lea nodded sagely.

"I see," he said, and Kairi stuck her tongue out.

"Well, they're still _technically_ fruits," she insisted, turning to Sora. "So I win."

"Nuh uh, Lea said they're _taxed_ like vegetables, so we _both_ win," Sora said, and then looked at Riku. "Right?"

Riku lifted both hands and took a step back. "Don't drag me back into this," he said.

"Like you even know how taxes work," Kairi said, rolling her eyes.

"I do so!" Sora said, and then paused and scratched his head. "Well… okay maybe not. It's not like I ever had to pay taxes for the munny the Heartless dropped."

"You know tax evasion is a felony on most worlds," Lea pointed out, and Sora suddenly looked concerned.

"Th-they'll never take me alive," Sora said quickly, holding up his hands in a defensive stance, and Riku raked a hand back through his hair.

"Well, now that _that's_ settled," he said, "could we maybe get back to training?"

There was a chorus of disappointed noises from both Kairi and Sora, and Lea raised his hand. Riku blinked confusedly at him, then pointed.

"Uh... yes, Lea?"

"Counter-proposal," he said, and Riku let his head loll backward in frustration. "We call it a day and go get some ice cream instead."

"Seconded!" Kairi said, her hand shooting up in the air.

"Thirded!" Sora chimed in, doing the same.

Lea clapped his hands together and made fingerguns at Riku.

"Aaaand the motion passes," he said brightly. "Your suggestion is overturned."

"Keyblade training is _not_ a democracy," Riku pointed out dryly, but seemed resigned to the fact that no one was really listening anymore. "All right, all right, fine," he sighed, "but we're getting started half an hour early tomorrow."

"Counter-proposal--"

" _No_ ," Riku said sharply before Lea could continue, snapping one arm out and gently knife-handing him in the side.

"Your days of tyranny are numbered," Lea hissed dramatically.

"Should we go to the islands?" Sora asked. "Or do you wanna go to Twilight Town and get your weird blue ice cream?"

"It's not weird," Lea insisted, folding his arms over his chest, "you just have no taste."

"Yes huh I do," Sora said, putting his hands on his hips as they made their way back toward Yen Sid's tower, to where the train to Twilight Town pulled up along the edge of the grass on its glowing tracks. "I like _strawberry_ ice cream." He turned to Kairi then. "And _strawberries_ are a _fruit_!"

"Did you know strawberries actually share a common ancestor with roses?" Lea asked, lifting a finger importantly.

"Seriously?" Sora asked. "That's... really weird."

"Well, they make rose ice cream, actually," Kairi pointed out, and Sora wrinkled his nose.

"What? They do _not_."

"They make potato ice cream, too," Lea added, and Sora stopped dead in his tracks.

"You're both pulling my leg," he said, and Lea just laughed.

"No, seriously, they do!" he said. "It's taro root, so it's not _exactly_ a potato, but it's _basically_ a potato."

"Potato _ice cream_?"

"And it's purple, too," he said. "So if you thought my blue ice cream was weird..."

"You're making this up," Sora said, and Lea dragged his thumb diagonally across his chest.

"Cross my heart," he said with a grin. "Like Kairi said: I know things."

"I'll believe it when I see it."

"Fine, we'll go to Twilight Town, and you'll see. If I'm lying, I'll buy your ice cream," Lea said, sliding his hands into his pockets. "And if I'm not... you buy, _and_ you have to eat the purple potato ice cream. Deal?"

Sora squinted at him. "I feel like no matter what I say I'm gonna regret it..." he said, and Lea chuckled to himself, wondering absently if Roxas wasn't trying to warn Sora never to make a deal with him, somewhere in the depths of Sora's heart. Traitor.

As they made their way to the sidewalk to head into town, Lea turned to watch Sora thread his fingers together behind his head, watched as Kairi hid laughter behind one hand at a corny remark, watched Riku grin brightly and chime in his own thoughts, and for a moment, he felt like an outlier. These three young people had been together nearly their whole lives, and here he was, a former enemy, edging in on this frendship like some sort of invasive vine. He had already screwed up his friendship with Roxas and--

\--and? Why had he felt like there was another name there on the tip of his tongue?

Anyway. He had already screwed up one friendship, what made him think he would do any better this time around? What even gave him the right to try?

He realized his steps had slowed when Sora's voice rang out from in front of him.

"Lea, what're you doing?" he called, and Lea snapped his head up.

"Huh?"

"C'mon, last one to the train is buying!" Sora said, and took off running.

"Wh-- _Hey_! That's cheating, we already _made_ a deal!" Lea shouted, and took off after him, leaving Kairi and Riku to exchange long-suffering looks in their wake.

Maybe friendship was no less complicated than math, and no more logical or comprehensible than modern art, and it _certainly_ wasn't any easier to explain than Sora's hair, but maybe that was what made it fun. Maybe that was why every friendship--past, present, and even future--was different. Lea had met a lot of people in his life, and every relationship, no matter how fleeting or temporary, was as unique as the two people forging it. 

As he gained on Sora, the sound of their running footfalls muffled against the grass, all Lea could think was that however nonsensical or confusing or inscrutable friendship might have been, each one, without exception, was worth every baffling moment.


	2. Radiant Garden

Axel didn't miss Radiant Garden.

Certainly the argument could be made that he _couldn't_ miss Radiant Garden, because in order to do that he would have needed a heart, but the truth was he wasn't sure he would have missed it anyway. It was gone, replaced with a broken husk of the world he had once known, and really, there was no sense pining for things that couldn't be fixed. Axel may not have been the most pragmatic of souls, but he did endeavor not to waste energy on useless things, in the end.

He had missed it initially, or he had thought as much, those first few frightening nights he and Saïx had spent in this strange, cloistered castle in its dark, detached world. He had missed his parents and his bedroom and the posters on his walls, but as the days passed, he told himself that without a heart, he simply _couldn't_ miss those things, and eventually the pangs of nostalgia had faded along with everything else.

He still thought about it sometimes, though, on those long (endless, really) nights in The World That Never Was, when the great cordiform moon cast its eerie golden light down over the city, never flanked by stars. He thought about how back on Radiant Garden, the moon was smaller, ringed with a halo of white on cold nights, and how the stars drew pictures all around it, like the images in those coloring activity books he used to love when he was a child. Constellations were just connecting the dots in the heavens, he used to tell his mother, and that was why he liked them so much.

He thought about it sometimes, as he sat atop the clock tower in Twilight Town and watched the sun adamantly refuse to sink into the ocean against the horizon. He thought about how on Radiant Garden, the sunsets were less red and more gold, and the sun slipped behind ranks of mountains in the distance where they dotted the endless ocean beyond the castle town, before it sank out of sight and the sky turned indigo. Sunset had always been his favorite time of day, because getting up early was hard, so sunrises were far too much work, but everyone loved a sunset, and that made it the most memorable time of day there was.

He remembered, sometimes, as he walked through a city square in a far-off world, the way the cobbled stones of the streets in Radiant Garden had made colored patterns; he remembered the way he always used to tell Isa that if he stepped on the yellow bricks, he would be cursed for the rest of the day. Isa had stepped on the yellow bricks on purpose and _dared_ him to prove there was a curse. He wondered, sometimes, if all those yellow bricks had added up to the tinny yellow of Saïx's eyes these days. He remembered, sometimes, as he passed a marble fountain in a faraway city, the way the water had cascaded town the tiled towers in the Fountain Court behind the castle, and the way he and Isa had spent so many blistering summer afternoons with their pants rolled up around their knees and their feet in the cool water as they frantically tried to eat their ice cream before it melted.

He remembered houses and faces and sounds and smells. He remembered the easygoing ambiance of his home world with a diffused, muted sort of fondness, the way someone might recall a particular playlist of songs they had listened to during a memorable summer: quietly, and with the kind of reverence you only attributed to something you knew was long gone and could never come back, even if you had the heart to wish for it.

Axel didn't miss Radiant Garden, but sometimes there was a pain behind his ribs when he thought about the gabled rooftops and the cool stones of the Bailey and the way the castle cast long shadows across the town like a great sundial as the day progressed. He didn't miss Radiant Garden, but sometimes, Axel realized one hazy afternoon as he stood atop the tower, ice cream in hand and eyes on the horizon... sometimes he missed missing it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops i made myself sad.


End file.
